“Nostalgia sells! Veronica Kirk IS a gold mine. I wish I had ten more like her.”

“But they’re all gone. Crawford, Miriam Hopkins, Zasu Pitts.”

“All the rest of em are doing guest shots on ‘The Love Boat’.”

Though Veronica Kirk never made an appearance on The Love Boat, her portrayer, Bibi Osterwald, did. It was a 1978 episode called “Ship of Ghouls.” Osterwald played a groupie of a magician played by Vincent Price. (The woman pictured here is not Ostenwald, but Joan Blondell.)

Haver is determined to save Veronica from Bibi’s cruel fate: “So, you tell that banshee who hired you that she does NOT control Veronica- or her money. Yet.” He stomps off, mad.

After the feisty old lady disappears into the night, the next thing we see is …

… a feisty young lady: Laura, looking crisply professional as always. She is speaking to someone in Steele’s office. “From the sound of it, Miss Kirk, she hasn’t been gone very long.”

Laura rounds the desk, where Mr. Steele is NOT sitting, and faces her presumed client (and Murphy, looking casual-Fridays as always). Laura wants to know if Miss Kirk has contacted the police. I want to know why Miss Kirk is dressed like Mary Poppins.

Miss Kirk explains she was hoping to avoid drawing attention to her mother’s “medical problem.” That problem being tequila. And besides, that fact that “she’s been virtual shut-in for the past 30 years has given rise to – frequent lapses in memory, bouts of senility, and even paranoid delusions. For the past two months, my mother’s been convinced that someone’s trying to kill her.”

Bernice concedes she laid it on a bit thick. “With a trowel,” he agrees.”

“Look,” she cajoles. “Just this once, couldn’t you let me win?” Clearly still turned on by this repartee, Mr. Steele responds, “What? And ruin our perfect record?” Is that a trowel in your pocket, Mr. Steele, or are you just yada yada yada.

Steele leaves Bernice with a puckish smirk and playful tap with his newspaper in the vicinity of her backside. Bernice mentally prepares her sexual harassment filing.

Back in the office, Mr. Steele arrives just in time to hear Miss Poppins say, “I was hoping your agency could handle this with the right sort of discretion.”

Good news! Discretion is Mr. Steele’s middle name!

Steele pronounces himself pleased that his minions went ahead and started without him. But now he’s here, and ready to take charge.

Laura says she thought he was still busy … “At the mayor’s office?” he says. “What’s the point? My views on crime are public knowledge.” (I’m guessing his view is that crime is bad – if he’s not the one committing it.) Steele prefers to be here, where the action is. Where he can really make a difference. “Eh, Mr. Michaels?”

“You certainly do make a difference, sir,” Murphy retorts, using that razor-keen wit for which he is famed.

“Now, how can we be of service?” Steele asks. Ordinarily, any woman would be happy to be service by Mr. Steele. But Miss Kirk seems unaffected by his charm. On the other hand, Laura seems VERY affected.

The new client is identified as Jennifer Kirk.

“Seems her mother, Veronica, is missing,” Laura grudgingly explains.

This piques Mr. Steele’s interest. “Kirk?”

Which Kirk is Steele a fan of?

As Laura tries to explain the particulars of the case, Mr. Steele is agog. “Veronica? Veronica Kirk?”

“Not THE Veronica Kirk? Death’s darling? The Camille of Gower Gulch?”

Squeeeeeee!

Miss Poppins isn’t impressed. “I’m afraid so,” she says.

Laura, who apparently wasn’t paying attention to all those hundreds of times Mr. Steele has demonstrated his encyclopedic knowledge of film, inquires, “You knew Veronica Kirk was an actress?”

“You didn’t?”

Well played, Mr. Steele.

“Oh, it’s true she hasn’t made a picture in- must be nearly three decades-” he admits.

So … after many months, here we are again. I confess I kind of abandoned this blog because of an apparent lack of interest (and it’s quite a lot of work, to be honest). But I was feeling a little nostalgic, so I thought I’d pick it up again – for now. Can’t promise how long it’s going to last.

Our episode opens on an outside view of a palatial home on a dark night. Suddenly we hear a scream. What horror could have prompted this bloodcurdling cry?

Perhaps the revelation that people actually name children Bibi.

Bibi Osterwald in her heyday. She seems like a cheerful gal.

Bibi Osterwald had already enjoyed a long and active career before this guest shot on Remington Steele. Beginning in 1948, she played a wide variety of guest roles on TV (her only regular live action series role appears to have been as David Birney’s mother on the early 70s series “Bridget Loves Bernie.” Her final role was as Grammy Gingersnap on the Rugrats cartoon. She died in 2002 at the age of 83.

Suddenly we hear shots ring out! More screaming! A light snaps on in the house, and …

… we learn that the very versatile Peter Jurasik is also guesting tonight, in the first of two guest appearances on Remington Steele. A steadily working character actor, Jurasik has achieved cult status in two roles in particular..

As the pompous and belligerent Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari on the TV series Babylon 5, and as the ill-fated compound-interest Program Crom in the 1982 film Tron. I gotta be honest: I love me some Peter Jurasik.

The screaming continues, not entirely convincingly, as our view moves to a dimly hit hallway inside the mansion.

Suddenly a figure in a flowing nightgown appears at the end of the hall.

It seems it is she who is screaming, presumably from having stubbed her toe on one of those big pieces of furniture sitting in the hallway to trip over in the dark.

As she gets closer, we see it is an older lady in a hurry.

The background music is hectic, letting us know this is a dramatic situation. (Nothing communicates DANGER like the sound of a clarinet running up a scale, backed by a string section. Scary!)

The woman reaches a staircase, and the sudden appearance of Gareth Davies’ producer credit in front of her causes her to lose her balance.

She (or more accurately, a stunt double) tumbles to the bottom. Now we know what to expect from this episode: “Remington Steele and the Case of the Broken Hip.”

Some old guy appears who looks like Batman’s butler (Is this the Wayne Mansion? Is the fleeing lady Aunt Harriet?)

Holy unexpected crossover, Batman!

He encounters another lady in a silky, albeit somewhat matronly, nightie, to whom he shouts, “She’s at it again!” At the same time, the credits helpfully remind us that Butler and Gleason created this awesome show.

Well done, gentlemen.

The apparent rescuers dash down the stairs. We learn this episode was written by Peter Lefcourt. This is Lefcourt’s only writing credit for Remington Steele, but he wrote several for Scarecrow & Mrs. King (perhaps poached in the same raid that stole Beverly Garland) and Cagney & Lacey, among other series.

The older gentleman and lady do not discover a body at the bottom of the staircase. This is a surprise.

“Mother!” the lady calls. So is the old guy Dad?

We see the elderly woman again, looking almost regal in her nightgown and robe. Dramatically she declares, “He won’t get me tonight. Not tonight!”

And then, using the distraction of director Seymour Robbie’s credit, she escapes into the darkness …

We are approaching the exciting climax of the episode! Oh, dear. Did I say climax?

We see Steele and Laura racing toward the sound of the giggling.

Here they come.

As they arrive back in the drawing room, they are shocked to see …

Miss May, cavorting on tape.

This, it seems, is an unexpected development.

I thought Laura had this all figured out?

Laura hits the pause button, and we note that it’s 9:08 pm. Does Mr. Steele get overtime for these long hours? Just then ..

Steele and Laura whirl at the sound of a voice behind them: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Um. I’m pretty sure they’re right there. Not hiding or anything.

Look! It’s Mrs. Roper, dressed like a Bond girl. Or a janitor.

Steele keeps his cool. “Miss Russell. I must admit, this is quite a surprise.”

Is that your hands in your pockets, Mr. Steele, or are you just glad – nope. Just his hands in his pockets.
Mrs. Roper has a gun trained on them, and now she’s insulted. You may wish to work on your people skills, Mr. S.

“Why? Because you thought I was too dumb to plan this weekend?” she says.

“No offense,” Steele assuages her.

“… but you do give the impression of someone more comfortable with cartoons than Kafka.”

Well, that should smooth things over.

“Shame on you, Mr. Steele,” she answers, leaning provocatively against the wall. ” You’re just like everybody else. When you have a face and a body, that’s all people figure you have.”

Something tells me Mr. Steele’s not so sure about the whole “face and body” rationale.

“Devil magazine was going to be my chance to prove I was good at something besides showing myself,” she continues.

” Only, Ambrose didn’t give me what was coming to me.”

“So he got what was coming to him,” Steele says.

Steele seems to appreciate the symmetry of her solution, but Laura wants answers. “How’d you get him to tape that greeting?” Laura asks.

“He LOVED to prove how clever he was. When everyone was in watching him on television, he was going to sneak through the kitchen and be waiting at the dinner table when you came back.”

Can we just get on with the take-down?

Nope.

“I didn’t fool you for a moment with my impersonation of Dr. Bellows, did I?” Steele makes chit-chat.

“No, Mr. Steele. Not when it took two years in Switzerland to put me back together after that drunken butcher cut me up.”

Is there any point in us knowing this backstory?

“How did Dominic get in the house?” Laura wants to know.

“I hope you don’t mind us asking all these questions,” Steele adds.

“But we’re really quite taken with your creativeness.”

Are we?

“I unlocked the rear door. Didn’t want the poor man to catch his death outside.”

So … Randi killed Feldman, then ran back to the house, hid someplace while Steele & Laura locked all the doors, then unlocked the back door when they were elsewhere, then waited for Dominic to come back to his room and managed to get a noose around his neck and hang him (she’s stronger than she looks!), then got back downstairs ahead of Steele & Laura and turned on the VCR, then hid again until they came downstairs and confronted them instead of just shooting them dead when she saw them.

If you say so.

“Obviously you intend to leave this island before tomorrow morning,” Laura surmises. Meanwhile Mr. Steele, like the rest of us, seems on the verge of dozing off.

“There’s a boat moored on the next island, just two point six miles with the current.”

” I swim every day to keep in shape.” Plus, she has a pair of flotation devices supplied by Dr. Bellows!

According to Wikipedia, “The Mae West was a common nickname for the first inflatable life preserver, which was invented in 1928 by Peter Markus (1885–1974) (US Patent 1694714), with his subsequent improvements in 1930 and 1931.[4] The nickname originated because someone wearing the inflated life preserver often appeared to be as physically endowed as the actress.”

See, Laura? This is what happens when you turn Mr. Steele down too often. He lowers his standards.

Randi, in her most familiar position (on her back) has the last word: “You know, I liked you a hell of a lot better when you were Dr. Bellows.”

So now they just have to sit on her for another 12 hours in a house full of corpses, wait for the helicopter to come back, contact the authorities and explain what happened and undergo questioning at the police station for a few more hours. Sounds simple enough.

The intimacy of the scene moves Steele to feel like sharing. “Laura …”

“

“On the remote chance that we don’t survive this til tomorrow …”

“… I’d feel better if you knew a few things about me.”

“Perhaps not very pleasant things.”

Laura seems oddly distracted here. After pushing him to open up for so long, you’d think she’d be more interested. Of course, there is the matter of the house full of bodies and the crazy killer on the loose. But still.

Mr. Steele takes a deep breath. Clearly this is difficult for him.

“It was Dublin,” Steele begins. “The city was rife with unrest. Trouble to the north, trouble to the south -“

“Is that where you were born? Dublin?” Laura interrupts.

Steele doesn’t appreciate her interrupting the flow of his narrative. “Laura, please. These confessionals are trying enough without interruptions.”

She apologizes softly.

Steele decides to continue. “Uh, where was I? Ahh, Dublin.”

Suddenly there is a bang from somewhere above them.

“What was that?” he asks.
“It- sounded like a shutter,” Laura answers.
“Does that mean we have to go back upstairs with all those …”

He seems … eager scared stiff.

“Well, I don’t think we want Dominic to find a way in, especially with him having the only gun in the house,” Laura says.

Okay, then.

One more butt shot, for the road.

Steele has been thinking about this detective business, by the way.

“If we’re fortunate to leave this island alive …”

“I’m going to insist that we carry weapons.”

” Especially when we’re NOT working on a case.”
They continue ascending the stairs …

Nice atmospheric lighting in this scene. Once again, Laura leads the way.

They walk side by side in the darkness. Seems like it might have been a good chance to hold hands for mutual comfort. But there’s not quite there yet.

“Of COURSE,” Laura exclaims, apparently not at all wigged out by the hanging body. (Remember how she reacted in “License to Steele” when she and Murphy came upon Ben Pearson’s body? You’ve come a long way, baby.)

“Of course what? This would seem to suggest that one of us is the murderer,” Steele notes.

“Oh, what a weekend!”

“Something I said,” Laura muses.

“Something you said?” (Note the reflection of Dominic hanging in the mirror behind them, BTW.)

“About somebody ELSE having seen the movie.”

The lightbulb goes on for Steele. “You mean, pretending to be a victim?”

“We have to start checking rooms,” Laura decides.

Just then a kind of maniacal, very familiar, giggling erupts below them.

Suddenly something causes Steele to stop short. Did he see something, or is it a cunning maneuver to feel Laura up?

You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Steele.

Oh, wait. I guess he DID see something. Specifically, Dominic bending over Feldman’s dead body.

Dominic sees them and pulls out his piece.

Sorry.

The Silent Partner fires his loud gun at our heroes.

They take cover. Steele seems better covered than Laura. Not very gentlemanly, sir.

Dominic scampers off into the forest.

Laura and Steele leave their not-very-adequate cover.

They head for Feldman’s body. Look at Laura’s bouncing hair! Look at Steele’s nicely toned butt!

They find Feldman still dead.

Steele picks up the murder weapon. “Not very poetic,” he comments.

“But it certainly got the job done.”

Well, there’s something to be said for efficiency.

“We’d better get back to the house before he does,” Laura suggests.

Um, considering he ran off a while ago and you’ve been here musing over the corpse, I’m pretty sure he will have beaten you back to the house already if that’s his destination, Laura. But what do I know; I’m not a detective.

They approach the house at a gallop.

Laura’s firing off orders: “You lock the doors and windows down here, I’ll take the second floor.”

Even in times of great stress, they make a nice looking couple, don’t you think?

Steele slams the door shut behind them …

… offering us another butt shot. Why not take off that jacket, Mr. Steele?

Moments later (or perhaps hours later; time seems to run a little wonky on this island) …

… Feldman spins his tale. “It was Randi who came up with the initial financing for Devil’s Advocate magazine.”

“Ambrose promised they’d split everything down the middle.”

“But when the magazine took off, which was almost after the first issue, he realized what a gold mine he was sitting on and he didn’t want to split up anything with anybody. ”

Oh, look! Someone took the time to make tea. Just because the place is strewn with bodies doesn’t mean we can’t all be civilized, eh?

“So, she hired me to take him to court,” Feldman continues.

“She had him, too. Even though there was nothing in writing, they had a verbal contract, an oral agreement …”

“…witnessed by one other person.”

“Madeline Vickers,” Laura deduces.

“Lawyers, Miss Holt, are a glut on the market. When you’re merely adequate, as I am, there aren’t a lot of firms clamoring for your services.”

“So it wasn’t a difficult decision for me to make when Ambrose offered to let me represent the magazine in exchange for sabotaging her case. No, it was depressingly easy.”

Whatever. Get to the point, pal.

“Everybody has a price, I guess.”
“And Madeline’s was a recording contract,” Steele remarks, genteelly lifting his cup.

Suddenly this is reminding me of that series of Taster’s Choice commercials in the 80s.

Gotta love me some Anthony Stewart Head. Anyway …

“Ambrose set up the label, she had a convenient lapse of memory, the case didn’t even come to trial.”

Silent Partner breaks his silence. “Why don’t you ask him who gets control of the magazine now that now that Ambrose is dead?”

Steele wants to know if congratulations are indeed in order. Wait. Are Feldman and Dominic getting married? How modern!

Feldman looks stunned as Dominic accuses:

“Only, as long as those two broads were alive there was always the chance that Madeline would tell the truth and he’d wind up with Randi as a partner.”

Feldman retaliates. “What about you, huh?”

“With Ambrose with out of the way, he’d have full ownership of the Devil’s Playground clubs.”

Boys, boys. Let’s not squabble. There’s enough pornography to go around for everybody!

“Great reason to ice Ambrose,” Dominic retorts. “But I had no beef with the others.”

Could Dominic be any more of a stereotyped Italian mobster? Faggetaboutit. But his comment raises a question about the plot of this episode.

Just where is the beef, anyway?

“YOU are it, Feldman,” Dominic fingers him.

Feldman declares he’s had enough of this kangaroo court.

According to Wikipedia, “Although the term kangaroo court has been erroneously explained to have its origin from Australia’s courts while it was a penal colony,[2] the first published instance is from an American source in the year 1850. Some sources suggest that it may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1849, along with mustang court,[3] as a description of the hastily carried-out proceedings used to deal with the issue of claim jumping miners.[2] Ostensibly the term comes from the notion of justice proceeding “by leaps”, like a kangaroo.[4] Another possibility is that the phrase could refer to the pouch of a kangaroo, meaning the court is in someone’s pocket. The phrase is popular in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand and is still in common use.[5]”

Not to be confused with a kangaroo ON the court. Kangaroos suck at basketball.

Feldman high tails it.

Dominic follows.

“Well?” he demands “Aren’t you gonna stop him?”

“We’re on an island, Mr. Dominic, he can’t get very far.”

“You think he was planning to be found here with all these stiffs when the helicopter showed up?” Dominic points out.

“He’s got a way off this island. We gotta find him!”

“He does make a certain amount of sense,” Laura concedes.

Yikes. When Dom’s the smartest guy in the room, we’ve got trouble.

Laura follows Dominic out; Steele dawdles. I think he’s had about enough of this sex comedy.

We left Miss Holt and Mr. Steele contemplating their relationship. The next morning …

They are bright-eyed and bushy tailed (though one wishes Laura had spent a bit of that quiet time contemplating her wardrobe.)

Steele, at least, is well turned out. He carefully adjusts his pocket square.

He knocks on a door. “Rise and shine, Dominic!”

Laura is Feldman’s wake-up call. Meanwhile, Mr. Steele does seem very concerned about that pocket square. There’s such a thing as being too fastidious about one’s grooming, Mr. Steele. Makes one seem a little precious.

We see Laura looking pensive in the big, satiny bed. (I wonder if anybody got anything to eat? Who is doing the cooking now that Miss May is dead?)

Steele has assumed the position on the fainting couch. “Laura?” he says quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking of what you said. About honesty in our relationship. And in the interest of a new forthrightness, I feel there are certain things you should know about me.”

Well, that’s a surprise!

Laura wants to know if he’s about to share pleasant things.

Ummm …

Laura decides ignorance may be bliss. “Sometimes, not knowing is better.”

“For instance, I wouldn’t want to know you had a wife and kiddies tucked away somewhere.”

Unlikely.

“Or that you killed someone …”

“… or swindled little old ladies out of their life savings.”

No comment.

Laura, in a confessional mood, continues. “When I invented Remington Steele, I gave him all the qualities that I admire in a man:”

“honesty, integrity, compassion, desire to help others …”

Sorry, Laura. If you found a guy like that, he would certainly be gay. Because that’s how it works. #bitterspinster

“Sounds as if you’re destined to be endlessly disappointed in me,” Steele notes.

“Maybe I created an impossible role for anyone to play.” (One wonders if Laura created such a paragon of virtue knowing no one could live up to her ideal – giving her an excuse to not become attached to any man who might break her heart.)

Time for a bathroom break? Nope. Laura needs to get closer to Steele as she’s baring her soul.

“We have a very. .. tenuous relationship, you and I,” she concedes.

Reaching him, she gets down on her knees to bring herself to an equal level with him. Significant?

She is very serious here. “And if we ever … cross that line … take that step …”

“…turn that corner …”

“All those awful eufemisms for going to bed with someone …”

“Then maybe I’ll want to know – everything.”

I think Steele is falling hard for this honest, vulnerable woman.

“Then again, maybe I won’t.”

Sounds like Laura is a little conflicted. But there’s one thing she is sure of:

“But I would want to know it would mean more than a moment.”

Oh, dear. And things were going so well.

“That it would last longer than a weekend in the Devil’s Playground.” Steele knows what she’s getting at.

“A commitment, of sorts.”

Mr. Steele responds with heart-breaking tenderness. He can’t give her what she wants to hear.

“I’ve spent the better part of my life avoiding those things like the proverbial plague.” (Note, however, that he doesn’t say anything about his future …)

Laura figured as much.

“But the fact that you wanted to be honest with me is a hell of a start.”

A bittersweet moment, an acknowledgement of mutual attraction but potentially insurmountable differences. Still, there is always hope …